


Safe Harbor

by tarysande



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang 2015, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5367689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He heard rumors she was personable enough, though he’d seen little of it himself. To him, she was sharp enough to cut, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to turn away her blows. Or prevent them.</p><p>Still, she had a lovely smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Harbor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janiejanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janiejanine/gifts).



> This was written for the 2015 Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, and [janiejanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janiejanine/)'s fanmix [_Just a Little Longer_](https://8tracks.com/janiejanine/just-a-little-longer). Thank you, lovely, for creating such an inspiring and wonderful collection.
> 
> The other piece inspired by [janiejanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janiejanine/)'s work is [Jade_Sabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/)'s [_Dispatch_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5354546).
> 
> One of the requests for the challenge was that the Inquisitor be either a rogue or warrior Trevelyan, so for anyone who has followed my other Inquisition work, this story does not follow my canon Inquisitor. This protagonist is someone new. :)

Under the guise of overseeing his recruits smashing away at each other, Cullen watched the Herald weave through the training yard. 

He did not yet know what to make of her; their interaction had been sparse, and his responsibilities to the Inquisition’s fledgling military force all-consuming. Thus far, the Herald had not shown a great deal of interest in the workings of the army, though he knew her to be a capable fighter. Her field reports, sparse and misspelled as they were, revealed that much, and Scout Harding spoke highly of her.

Josephine found her _trying_ —which, when parsed through the grammar of the ambassador’s diplomacy, Cullen took to mean some combination of infuriating, maddening and outright hostile. Leliana kept her own counsel, though Cullen did not miss the way the spymaster’s sharp gaze so often found the Herald and settled on her like she was a puzzle she meant to solve, no matter the cost. 

Cassandra, when asked her opinion, offered a brief and disgusted snort and said, “Varric likes her,” as if the statement explained everything.

Perhaps it did, for all that. Cullen knew better than most the company Varric preferred to keep.

The Herald looked healthier than she had; fresh air and skirmishes in the Hinterlands appeared to have done her good. She no longer held her left hand slightly apart from her body as though it did not belong to her, and the rolling, easy gait of her stride was confident, even when she was forced to duck swiftly to miss one of Perry’s wayward blows. Instead of the bored, irritated or annoyed expressions he was growing accustomed to seeing across the war table, she smiled, pausing to correct Perry’s grip. 

It was too loud, and Cullen too far away, to hear her words, but Perry ducked his head, and Cullen did not doubt the boy blushed hot enough to set fire to dry tinder. He heard rumors she was personable enough, though he’d seen little of it himself. To him, she was sharp enough to cut, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to turn away _her_ blows. Or prevent them.

Still, she had a lovely smile.

He turned away to show Carel just how wrongly she was using her shield—perhaps some kind of two-handed bashing weapon might suit her better—and only realized the Herald had drawn near because the scent of her perfume betrayed her. Even here, landlocked and snow-bound, she smelled of the sea, of rare spices, and a hint of some flower too exotic for him to name. Before he could greet her, she said, “Which idiot’s teaching your dual-wielders how to hold their weapons? They’re not bloody dinner knives, and they’re not learning how to saw away at a tough bit of meat.”

Caught between the sting of the implied reprimand and the challenge within it, even his most even reply came tinged with an undercurrent of affront. “Forgive me, Herald. I will… look to the oversight myself.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said. Snarled, really. At her sides, her hands twitched as if longing to reach for the pair of blades at her own back.

He inclined his head. “Lady Trevelyan.”

The noise she made would doubtless have earned Cassandra’s approval. “None of you listen to a blighted thing I say, do you?” She lifted her hand, gesturing brusquely at her face, snapping her fingers near the end of her nose. His gaze skimmed over the loops and whorls of tightly-braided black hair; the faint, red-hued tattoo around her eye; the nose that had once been broken and never quite properly set; the sharp cut of scars that had long-since healed but still pulled and puckered the flesh of her cheek and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, pale as turquoise and clear as still water, narrowed. 

“I’m afraid I don’t catch your meaning.”

“You’ve obviously never met the _Ladies_ Trevelyan, then. The _Ladies_ Trevelyan are as dead-fish pale as you are, with hair almost as blond. Mother, daughters—even the newest little teat-sucker’s straw-haired and pallid.” The flash of her teeth was too sharp to be called a smile. “No. My mother was Rivaini. A favorite of Bann Trevelyan’s. Favorite enough that he took me in and forced his name on me, whether I wanted it or no. My name’s Asha. Like the great queen. You can call me that.”

A beat of silence passed between them, the cold air ruffling his hair and freeing a lock of hers from its binding.

“Your Majesty,” he offered dryly, without rancor.

Her full lips parted, but the flash of rage that lit her eyes vanished half a breath later, replaced by a shrewd and calculating little smile. Not, as it happened, entirely unlike Leliana’s smile of puzzle-pondering. “Show me, then.” On his arched eyebrow, she explained, “Your grip. I’m not trusting you to do any better unless you prove you’re not going to teach your troops to attack with all the finesse of a blind woodsman chopping logs.”

Cullen’s spine stiffened and his chin crept up. Asha’s eyes, still narrowed, watched him closely. Too closely. She was, he realized, trying to get a rise out of him. Trying to see how far she could push. Trying to unsettle him. It was subtly done and almost successful. He said, “If you wished for a sparring partner, you need only have asked.”

The color in her cheeks deepened. Cullen shed his mantle, tossing it to Carel, who’d been watching the entire exchange with the kind of wide eyes that said no matter the outcome here, it would be all over Haven an hour after its completion. 

“Practice blades?” Asha asked. Challenged.

“Unnecessary,” he replied, already striding to a waiting rack of weapons and testing the balance of a dangerous-looking dagger. “Unless you think you cannot check yourself in the heat of the moment.”

“Ahh.” She winked. “I’ve never had anyone complain.”

Perhaps he did not blush as bright as poor Perry, but warmth in his cheeks did betray him, and her smirk as she shrugged out of her own cloak told him she’d caught the evidence of her effect on him.

All templar recruits took extensive weapons training, and Cullen, so desperate to be accepted—to fit in, to excel, to make his family proud, to give his choice value—had thrown himself wholeheartedly into learning as much as he could about everything he could get his hands on, be it book or blade. Cullen excelled with sword and shield, was nearly as capable with a greatsword, and was passing fair with a bow. He knew staves because mages knew staves, and he’d been trained to know mages. Twin daggers were not his weapons of choice, but he drilled with them frequently precisely because he did not wish to appear at disadvantage with his soldiers. Every weapon he put in another’s hands, he’d tried himself. Every training session he guided, he took part in. It was a promise he’d made to himself before agreeing to Cassandra’s offer—he would ask no one to do what he would not. He would not lead from behind a desk, by distant missives, or at the rear of a battleground.

If the Herald of Andraste wanted him to prove himself capable, he would do so without pride.

He flipped his pair of knives until the hilts balanced easily in his palms. He caught her examining his grip, but if she found anything to fault, she did not say so. Patient, he let her circle him. He had to compensate for his heavier armor, and watching her move might reveal a flaw, a tell, a weakness. She smiled. “Now, now, Commander,” she said sweetly. “For it to work, both partners must dance.”

She moved like the sea. Sometimes rhythmic and patient, sometimes mercurial and monstrous. He could not catch her measure. As soon as he thought he understood the push and pull of her tides, she turned and struck with the ferocity of a sudden storm or an unexpected wave, and much as he wished he were fighting back like a captain in control of his ship, he knew very well his were the flailing actions of a drowning man.

She knew it too. He could see it in her eyes.

Breathing heavily, he ducked away from one blow only to twist into the path of the second. He flung himself backward, coming up in a crouch before she could dart in and—metaphorically, he hoped—finish him off. Balancing lightly on the balls of her feet, she watched him. “Have you had enough?”

“No,” he replied.

He was method. Training. Drills. He was practice yards at dawn and practice dummies until dusk and maneuvers repeated a thousand times until his muscles could echo his intention without wasting thought. He was order and Order. 

She, he realized, catching a little understanding at last, was none of these. She followed no rules and she used his rules against him. She fought fierce and dirty; she fought to win. More than that, she thought his rules and training and order signs of weakness, small cracks in the armor she might use to her advantage.

And he’d been letting her.

The next time she darted in to launch a flurry of swift attacks, he did not move to block her. He let the edge of one knife skitter harmlessly against the plate protecting his forearm, and he kicked a foot between her feet, hooking his toes behind an ankle and tugging hard.

She fell like a wave crashing against shore it could not defeat. Her limbs windmilled outward, and one dagger fell from the hand she used to catch herself. Before she could twist away from him and regain her footing—the matter of a moment, he suspected, if he let her have it—Cullen followed her down to the dirt, pinning her hips with his thighs, catching the hand still holding the other knife and holding it above her head. The lock of dark hair that had come loose from its braids fall across her sweating brow and her pale eyes were hot with something more like satisfaction than anger.

“You’ll do,” she said, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten the curve of her bottom lip, her breath warm against his cheek. “But you’re still dead.”

He chuckled, briefly tightening the grip on her wrist, his other hand holding a glinting blade at her throat. “How do you figure?”

“Don’t breathe too deep, or you’ll find out. The hard way.” Her brows lifted. “And not the good kind of hard way, either.”

Without letting her up, he glanced down. A slender third blade had slipped from her sleeve into her free hand, and was now pressed up close to the base of his breastplate.

He held out a hand as he rose to his feet, freeing her. She accepted after a breath of hesitation, and then her grip lingered a moment too long, her fingertips brushing the inside of his wrist. Even against the leather, he felt the press against a pulse tripping too quickly for mere exertion to explain.

“I call that a draw, Commander,” she said. “And I request a rematch.”

“At your leisure,” he agreed, rather looking forward to it himself, to his very great surprise. “Heral—Asha.”

#

She brought him gifts, sometimes. Trinkets. Small bits of glittery glass and jewels. Figurines. Bottles of the wine he liked; Fereldan cookies and Orlesian chocolate. Occasionally, she left books.

She never left notes. She never signed her name.

He tried thanking her once, and she retaliated by trouncing him so soundly on the training field it took three weeks and a number of reprimands to earn the respect of his soldiers once again.

She didn’t stop leaving gifts.

#

Cullen locked his office door, leaned against it, and contemplated curling up to sleep under his desk if only to avoid the final exertion of climbing the ladder to his loft. Days like this, where one thing led to another, and every time he found a moment to breathe someone else shoved another important missive under his nose, he forgot what it felt like to be properly fed and rested. He’d long since lost track of the time, and only knew it was likely closer to sunrise than sunset. Tomorrow would bring another long day; the Inquisitor was expected back, and Skyhold did like to show its best face for her. Especially when her absence dragged over weeks. The business waiting for her in the war room alone would keep them all busy for days. 

He swallowed his sigh. They were doing good work, work he could be proud of. The wounds of Haven were healing, the mages were slowly integrating into Skyhold’s hierarchy, and preparations for the ball at Halamshiral were well underway. The latter was no small part of Cullen’s current state of sleepless stress; the Inquisition was new, Orlais was not known for being welcoming, and finding the right balance between entourage and army was not an easy one. The Inquisition must bring guards, of that there was no question, but he did not want to invite war by choosing the wrong people with the wrong politics who might be standing too close to the Empress holding a weapon and a grudge.

Cullen pushed his hands through his hair, glanced at the pile of papers that had only grown more plentiful throughout the day, and forced himself to turn away, toward the ladder. 

He blamed exhaustion—could only blame exhaustion—for his lack of attention. He’d loosened his mantle and was working on the buckle of his sword belt when he realized he was not alone in his loft. Shadows shifted on the bed; a breath ghosted out after it, almost sweet enough to be a laugh.

He’d been more tired than he thought, if he’d fallen asleep without realizing. Immediately, his sword was in his hand and he dropped into a defensive crouch, squinting into the dark, praying to wake.

With both moons high, pale light spilled through the rents in the damaged roof, illuminating a woman—a demon, his nightmares always began with demons—sitting in the middle of his bed, clothed only in her luminous, moonlit skin and the fall of unbound dark hair long enough to pool at her hips. Her face remained in shadow, though it hardly mattered whose it was. She’d been someone he cared for, once. Or someone he’d failed. Both, perhaps. Usually. Cullen shook his head, shifted another step backward, and clenched his free hand into a fist, trying to wake himself.

Not that it was ever so simple to wake from nightmares like these. Not before he’d been tempted. Not before the sweet kisses and warm thighs inevitably leading to grief and blood and the screams of dead comrades. Not when he’d been so completely ambushed, so entirely taken by surprise.

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just. Blessed are they—blessed are they—” He shook his head. The image did not disappear.  

“All right,” the demon said slowly, in the Inquisitor’s voice, “not the reaction I was expecting. Or looking for.”

He said nothing, litany of the Chant repeating silently in his head. _Blessed are they. Do not falter._

“Commander?”

He drove his fist into the meaty part of his thigh, sharp and angry, and grunted but did not wake.

“Cullen?”

It sounded so very much like the Inquisitor. The inflection of his name, the slight lilt of the vowels a leftover from her mother’s accent and not her father’s, even the faint tinge of disappointment—they were all Asha. And yet. They did not—he’d imagined, perhaps, once or twice the possibility—but they did not have the… the kind of relationship in which moonlight alone was appropriate dress.

Even the sigh as the demon moved was identical, Asha’s mix of long-suffering and fondness. “So much for surprises,” it said, pulling at him, tugging him unwillingly into its tempting world. “I thought—that kiss on the battlements—”

She sounded confused. Perhaps sad. Different tactics. He shook his head again and wondered if a fall down to his office in a dream would wake him.

“The Inquisitor is not due back until tomorrow,” he said through gritted teeth, regretting the words as soon as the demon turned her face toward him. The moonlight caught the pale, wounded turquoise of her eyes, darkening the shadows cast by her sharp cheekbones. 

A slender hand reached for his single sheet, clutching it close to hide what hair and moonlight did not. “I came back early. I… well. It doesn’t matter what I thought, does it?”

He began, against all reason, to doubt. The point of his blade dropped; with no shield on his other arm he knew he was leaving himself open. To a blade. To a word. He said, “I’m not dreaming this.”

He hadn’t curled up under his desk, hadn’t put his head down on his arm, wasn’t snoring in the library while Dorian resisted—or didn’t—drawing on him with ink. The sword dropped further, the tip touching the floorboards near one of the broken beams. 

“You have nightmares.” He saw her shiver. He didn’t think demons shivered. Asha had shivered after he’d kissed her on the battlements, before warming them both with a kiss of her own. And then she’d left again, to the Storm Coast, with nary a word about it. “I didn’t know. I had a captain whose nightmares were so bad we finally had to lock him in his cabin at night. He nearly killed a girl, thinking she was a thief.”

He’d certainly never had a demon speak to him about captains. Ignoring the tremble in his hand, he sheathed his sword. A moment later, he pulled his mantle free of his shoulders, took the four steps necessary to cross to the bed, and draped the fur and fabric around the Inquisitor’s shoulders.

“Asha,” she said, so firmly he thought he’d spoken aloud. “I can see it, you know. When you’re thinking _Herald_ or _Inquisitor_ or… well, now I suppose I know what it looks like when you think I’m a demon. Not one I’d care to repeat.”

He lifted his gaze, breathing in the cool breeze and the starlight, not watching as she slipped into his mantle and pulled it close. With her hair down, she smelled more strongly of foreign flowers. “Weren’t you meant for the Chantry? Is that not why you were at the Conclave?”

“The Chantry,” she sighed. “Like all good, devout, devoted Trevelyans. No. The Conclave was my punishment. How’s that for irony? I was meant to be on a penitent pilgrimage. I’d—sailed some rough waters. Got caught. Got condemned.” Cullen blinked, startled by this admission. He couldn’t bring himself to sit beside her. Even—perhaps especially—wrapped in his clothing, her long limbs and gentle curves were… distracting. In a manner he did not wish to be distracted. Not now, not with the ghosts of nightmares and old memories still haunting him.

“Nothing terrible,” she said. “The Red Raiders weren’t slavers, weren’t mercenaries. We ran spices, mostly, for merchants unwilling to pay hefty fees, or unable to hire ships of their own.” She ran a fingertip over the muted tattoo cresting like a wave around her eye and up onto the bridge of her nose. The dimness of the light stole the color, but he knew it was red. “Captain liked the name ‘cause he thought it sounded grim. Red like blood, right? Made us sound dangerous. Only really it was red like spices. Cinnamon. Hot pepper. The _money_ people will pay for hot pepper, you wouldn’t believe it. Sometimes we did coffee, or tea. Sugar.”

“You were… a smuggler?”

Asha was not a giggler. She did not titter behind her hand or smile politely without showing teeth. Her laughter came rich and hearty and so genuine it never failed to warm, for all it was so difficult to earn. “Don’t tell me Josephine neglected to mention it.”

“She knows then.”

The darkness did not hide the roll of her eyes. “I didn’t lie about it, though I do prefer the term _independent merchant_. And I daresay Leliana knew even earlier. My father was discreet, of course, but paying to have your bastard daughter released from Hercinian prison doesn’t come cheap. Or, I think, particularly quiet. Hence sending me off to the other side of Thedas for an extended, religious-themed vacation. And look how that turned out.” She turned over her left hand, and the faintest glimmer of green added its glow to the cool moonlight before she clenched her fingers closed around it.

“Does it pain you?”

Her lifted shoulder was neither a shrug of indifference nor a nod. “It is what it is. Better than the alternative. Though prison’s swiftly becoming a fond memory. At least I could escape from there. Or pay my way out.”

He reached for words but before he could find any to suit, she tossed her head and smiled. Sadly again. “ _Definitely_ not what I was expecting.”

She slipped off the opposite side of the bed. His mantle covered her to her knees, swathes of fabric hanging loose from her shoulders. He hadn’t realized how much smaller she was out of her armor, unprotected by her swagger, and though he knew her very capable of caring for herself, the sight of her moonlit and melancholy made him yearn to protect her, to wrap her in his arms.

“What _were_ you expecting?” he asked, hating the slight edge of accusation that seeped into his tone without his wanting it to.

She looked over her shoulder at him, face a paler darkness than her hair and the fur of his coat. “What does any naked woman waiting in a man’s bed expect, Commander?”

He turned his back as she dressed. It seemed only polite. When he thought it safe to turn around again, he found her already gone, vanished on her rogue-light feet, his mantle folded neatly at the foot of his mussed bed.

She hadn’t, he thought, answered the question.

#

The next morning, she was gone again. One of the scouts said she’d been called off on something important before she could return to Skyhold, but didn’t know what. The kitchen fussed about the dinner they’d prepared to welcome her back. Master Dennet unplaited the ribbons from the new horse’s mane and tail. Cullen’s recruits were lethargic and sullen, and Perry the worst of the lot. 

He wondered, just a little, if he’d dreamed the entire exchange after all.

Later, she sent a message to Leliana saying not to worry and she’d meet them all at Halamshiral.

She included nothing for him.

#

Cullen hated Halamshiral. Hated the pomp, hated the masks both physical and metaphorical, hated the uniform just a little too snug and leaving him much too vulnerable. For the first time since Kirkwall, he found himself wanting not the half-plate of the Inquisition armor he’d chosen for himself, but the full heavy plate of a templar. He wanted the anonymity of a flaming sword on his breastplate and a slitted helmet to hide behind. He’d have gladly stood midnight double-watch for weeks running if it meant not having to stand around making small talk and dodging unwanted and uncomfortable flirtation.

He resisted the urge to tug the hem of his jacket or run nervous fingers down the satin sash by folding his hands behind his back. His posture felt unbalanced without the weight of a sword at his hip; he kept shifting his stance to compensate for something that was not there. He yearned to turn that imbalance into pacing, but Josephine or Leliana would only ask the matter, and he’d be forced to stillness again to hide his discomfort. 

Leliana sighed, turning her hand over and examining the back of it as if the most important thing on her mind was the smoothness of her skin or the perfection of her manicure. She wore the red and blue of the uniform as though it were a ballgown in the height of fashion. Her hair gleamed red in the candlelight, the end of one small braid tickling her cheekbone when she turned her head to look at Josephine. Her face, bright and unshadowed by the darkness of her ever-present hood, seemed almost a stranger’s. “We are treading dangerously close to _un_ fashionably late.”

Josephine’s tight smile showed no teeth and required no words. Although ostensibly on the same side, she and the Inquisitor tended to butt heads more than they agreed. The Inquisitor, Cullen suspected, preferred the idea of assassinations to assignations, especially if it meant she could keep to the shadows. She still wore her title with as much comfort as he wore his ill-fitting jacket.

When the door to the Inquisitor’s room opened, however, he realized she would not be permitted to remain in the shadows on this evening. He thought the sharp inhale might have been his own, but if Leliana or Josephine noticed, they said nothing. Josephine’s lips parted, her eyes showing white all around the iris. Leliana lifted the hand she’d been examining earlier and hid a smile behind it. Her nails were lacquered red to match the uniform jacket.

The Inquisitor did not wear the Inquisition’s uniform. The only similarity was the color, though her gown was the deeper, darker red of blood. Though fashion did not often fall within his purview, Cullen still recognized the gown adhered to no Orlesian or Fereldan style he knew of, and his years in Kirkwall made him think it was not a Marcher fashion either. Layers of gauzy silk fluttered around her, the fabric wound about her hips in a waterfall of sheer folds hinting at skin beneath but revealing little of it. The fabric gathered at one shoulder overtop a short, sleeveless top that left her midriff bare, held in place by a gleaming ruby brooch and sending a long cascade of gold-embroidered silk flowing down behind her. Her arms, lean and muscled and capable of the swiftest strikes, looked deceptively innocent clad only in bangles of gold and ruby that chimed against each other every time she moved. Her hair was caught up in loops and braids, and when she turned her head he saw more rubies woven throughout, glimmering like drops of blood against the darkness. A delicate, ruby-studded mask of gold filigree hid little of her face and nothing of her triumphant expression.

“I told you,” she said, sweeping past Josephine without a second glance, “I wear no uniform. I wouldn’t do it for my father or the Chantry, and I won’t for the Inquisition. I belong only to myself, and to the Void with all the rest of it.”

She did not look at him as she passed him, candlelight flickering in the facets of her jewels, glittering on the golden embroidery. He did touch his sash then, and tug at his hem. He wished he’d never thought she was a nightmare.

If he’d been wearing his armor, his mantle, his lion-maned helmet, he’d have matched her. Now, though, he was only a third identical spoke in the wheel that had disappointed her and asked her to be something she would never be.

Later, after fending off forward nobles both male and female alike; after watching the Inquisitor slide through the Orlesian court with an ease that had to at last put to rest Josephine’s fears about political suitability; after helping save an Empress now beholden into gratitude whether she wished to be or not, Cullen found the Inquisitor alone on the wide terrace, leaning heavily on her bare arms, staring down into the darkness of the courtyard beneath. Again, she was moonlit, the pale milky glow cooler and softer than the firelight within.

The moonlight and the color of her gown did an admirable job of hiding the bloodstains.

“Please,” she said without turning around, “no more tonight.”

Cullen stopped several steps away, falling into the easy rest that had been drilled into him as a youth and which no distance from the Templar Order was able to shake from him. It was the stance of a soldier awaiting orders, which was no more what he wished to be than she’d wished to find him nightmare-addled and paranoid that night in his loft.

“Inquisitor,” he said, a request to stay or a request for dismissal—he wasn’t certain.

“Yes.” She turned, leaning against the balustrade, hands gripping the marble at her sides. “There’s no escaping it now, is there? Uniform or no uniform. Foolish, I suppose, to think I ever had a choice.” She closed her eyes, long lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. He wanted to take another step closer, wanted to bring himself to her side and offer his hand, his arm, his shoulder to lean on should she wish it, but instead he waited, ever the good soldier, ever the penitent boy, waiting to be told.

“You could go,” he said, each word falling heavy as a stone into the silence, leaving ripples upon ripples of tension in their wake. She swayed as the words hit her. “If you wanted. If you needed.”

She opened her left hand, that faint green glow a beacon in the dark, immovable and inescapable. “You think me so selfish, then?”

“Of course not.” He paused, weight shifting uneasily in a manner that would have seen him on kitchen duty for a week were he not now at the top of the Inquisition’s military chain of command with no one higher to reprimand him. “But I know what it is to feel trapped.”

“Like you do? In there? With all their eyes on you, and all their whispers in your ear?”

“Like I did,” he said, to keep from admitting how closely she’d landed to the truth, “with a sword and a calling and everything gone so spectacularly wrong.”

She pushed herself away from the wall, taking a step closer. Two. Close enough that her smell of sea and spices was more real than the cloying Orlesian flowers, the cloying Orlesian perfume. Close enough to touch, were he brave enough. Instead of closing his eyes and breathing the scent of her in, Cullen only bent his head to better see her face. He could not read her expression, and not only because she still wore her delicate jeweled mask. 

She lifted her hand, her right, and touched only her fingertips to his chest. It was a gesture somehow more intimate than her presence in her bed had been. He hoped the moonlight hid his blush. “What is it you want from me, Commander?”

Her nails, too, were lacquered red. Her palm flattened over his thudding heart. He said, “I wanted to see if you were all right. I meant to ask you to dance. I—wanted to apologize.”

“Yes,” she said again, without indicating what the word was in response to. “My mother wore a uniform, you know. Trevelyan colors. She loved him. That’s the part I never understood. She loved him, and she stayed, and he made her wear a uniform.”

Her hand left his chest, falling back to her side. “I used to hide in the rafters and watch parties like these when I was a little girl. I watched my mother serve wine, while Lady Trevelyan ignored her. I learned the way both sides work. And I learned what a weakness love is.” She reached up, untying the golden ribbon that held her mask to her face. “I am the sea and you are the shore,” she said, very quietly, pressing the mask into his hand and holding it there until his fingers unwillingly closed around it. “I do not think our natures will allow us to be more than kisses on battlements and mistakes in the moonlight.”

“Asha, wait,” he said, like a plea, like a prayer. But like the Maker, she had turned away from him, and gave no sign she heard.

#

Upon their return to Skyhold, Hawke appeared at Varric’s behest, bringing with her memories he’d thought faded, buried. Sometimes he caught Hawke’s voice in the hall or her laughter in the Herald’s Rest and he could smell Kirkwall again—the sickly harbor scent, the rain and the pervasive rot that came with it, fear and fire and Chantry incense used as a far more dangerous mask than anything the Orlesians could offer. After months without it, he began to crave the surcease a draught of lyrium would bring. His hands trembled; his nightmares grew worse. He snapped and snarled so often that even Josephine lost her patience with him, and Leliana watched him with such careful pity he was forced to remember that she’d been one of the Warden’s companions who’d found him in his cage in Kinloch Hold.

It was not a comforting thought. And it did nothing to ease his cravings. Or help him sleep.

Lyrium would help. Lyrium would take the edge off his memories, painting them in silver-blue and softness, the way it had always done. Lyrium would help him sleep without bad dreams.

The want sang and sang and sang.

He went to Cassandra after he slipped and called one of the mages Amell. The girl didn’t even look much like long-dead Solona, but something in her laughter had caught and held, like a physician’s needle pulling inadequate stitches through mortally wounded flesh. He’d snapped at her, called her the wrong name, and scared her. Just like the templars he’d tried not to emulate had scared other mages in other Circles, like it was their right.

He went to Cassandra and begged her to find a replacement for him. Someone who would not fail, as he had done. Over and over again. And she refused him.

He passed Varric and Hawke on the way back to his office; they invited him to join them for ale and reminiscing. But Cullen did not want ale, and he was not nostalgic about Kirkwall. He’d hauled too many broken bodies out from under fallen stones and shattered buildings. He’d spent too much time trying to keep the ship from sinking by plugging leaks with prayers and desperation and fabric torn from the Order he’d spent the entirety of his adult life upholding. How spectacularly he’d failed there, too.

By the time he reached his office, he was panting and sweating so heavily he could hardly bear the weight of the mantle on his shoulders, the warmth of the fur near his face. He tore the fabric from him, ripping it in his haste, and threw it on the floor at his feet. It had been foolish to think new clothes, new surroundings, a new title in a new organization could make a new man. He was who he’d always been.

He reached for the small case in his desk and the promise it carried within it.

Forgetting. Sleep.

Surcease.

He clenched his hand around it. And threw it hard. Asha turned out of its path, dancing forward to miss the bright rain of splinters and shattered glass.

“You know what it is to feel trapped,” Asha said, crouching down and retrieving one of the bottles. The silvery-blue gleamed luminous in her hand, like captured moonlight. He wanted to drown in it the way he’d wanted to drown in her arms, or her eyes, or the scent of her. “I see that now. Forgive _me_. I doubted you then.”

“I chose my chains,” Cullen said. “I held out my wrists with my eyes wide open and thanked them afterward for granting me the honor.”

Asha crossed the room until she faced him across his desk. His heart thudded in his ears, pounded in his breast, and his breath came hard, as if he’d been running over hard terrain for hours. She did not attempt to hide the lyrium from him. Instead, she held out the bottle. “If you want it,” she said, echoing his words to her at Halamshiral without judgment in her tone. “If you need it.”

The jewel of silver-blue gleamed against her warm skin. Cold. Distant. “I don’t,” he said, and meant it.

“I didn’t think so,” she agreed, and the bottle vanished. “Better to figure it out for yourself, though.”

#

Weeks later, she brought him a small, carved mabari. She left it on his desk with a note. He recognized her hand, of course, all her heavy, labored loops and the misspellings left over from being the Trevelyan who watched but wasn’t taught. An invitation this time, not a surprise. Her chambers.

He carried a pile of already-read missives in case anyone asked him his business with the Inquisitor at this hour.

No one did.

The room appeared empty at first. A fire burned in the hearth, and the bed held the shape of her body, as though she’d been lying there recently, atop the drawn covers. 

Outside, one moon was full and the other a waning sliver. Her hair was silver-kissed and heavy, falling unbound down her back and past her hips. He wanted to bury his hands in it, wanted to tilt her head back and kiss the full lips and the secret smile they wore. A silk robe was pulled snug around her, but her feet were bare against the chill stones.

“Harbors,” Asha said abruptly, and flushed, turning her eyes away from him. Like she was nervous. Like she was shy. “Where land meets sea. Not completely one or the other. They’re safe. Protected.”

“Harbors.”

She lifted her eyes to meet his, unmasked. “I could be yours, I think. If you would be mine. My place to come home to. I think it would work.”

_Home._

“I’d like that,” he said, and meant it. Perhaps it wasn’t certainty or promises, wasn’t forever or even always, but it might be something like it. Sailors needed harbors.

Perhaps old soldiers did too.

They certainly needed places to come home to.

Her eyes sparkled like he’d given her a gift as dear as the little mabari, the notes, the jewels and cookies and chocolates. Her hands reached for his and tugged, and then her lips were on his, her arm looped around his neck, his hand tangled in her hair. “Good.” She pressed kisses along the stubbled edge of his jaw until she reached his ear. “Now let’s work on that grip of yours, shall we?”

“Your Majesty,” he said, and she laughed and led him to her bed.

 


End file.
